Naivette
Sometimes people accuse me of being naive. On the surface, it is a reasonable assumption. I am an idealistic teenager with a cognitive disability. I might not have noticed the bumps in life.
In reality, the assertion is an absurdity. Sillies, what being a disabled teenager means isn't that I was protected. It's that the number of times that I have been assaulted is more numerous than the number of times that I have been protected.
In reality, after being mugged on the streets as a preteen I didn't even think about telling an adult because I didn't see the mugging as any different from what my classmates had done to me in almost a dozen schools.
In reality, I have a sensory processing system that makes many acts of kindness percieved as hostile and painful.
In reality, when I decide to spend time with people my mental mathematics says, Do you like that person enough that it's okay if he steals all the stuff you have on you, and do you have an escape route planned if she should attack?
I am young, it is true. And I am fond of people, indiscriminately, that's true. And I will care about you, even though you mean me ill, it's true.
But I am not naive.